Direct and indirect speech

What is Direct Speech?

l Consider the following sentence:

Rama said : ' A fine lesson will be taught to the wicked Ravana.'

The given sentence is in direct speech.

• Here the exact words of the speaker have been put within quotation marks.

• There is a colon after 'said'.
• The first word inside the quotation marks starts with a capital letter.

What is an indirect speech then?

Let's consider the indirect speech of the sentence under consideration ,

Rama said (that) a fine lesson would be taught to the wicked Ravana. 

In Indirect speech:

• The quotation marks as well as the colon after said are removed.
• The conjunction “that” introduces to us the words (not exact) spoken by the speaker. However the latest trend is to drop 'that'